


Living Our Future

by MarikaFromCincy



Category: Terminator (Movies), Terminator - All Media Types, Terminator Dark Fate
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-02-25 20:48:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 20,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21951706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarikaFromCincy/pseuds/MarikaFromCincy
Summary: Commander Dani Ramos knows that resistance solider Grace Madison becoming an augment is nothing like all the others. She struggles to explains the situation to her without revealing too much about the future.
Relationships: Grace & Dani Ramos, Grace/Dani Ramos
Comments: 28
Kudos: 165





	1. My Grace

Sgt. Will Harrell limped toward Dr. Ilona Dembak as she stared through the glass pane of what was once her research hospital into the operating room where the commander had asked to be left alone with the patient. It was not like either of them had any room to talk or ask questions or anything like that. Will was a bit surprised that the commander was even on her feet, she had been far more wounded than he had been a few days ago. But sometimes, she did seem to have mythical strength that nobody could explain. Or maybe that was the blinded by faith soldier in him speaking. Or the Sandhurst asshole in him, as the commander had once put it. He never chastised or criticized her hatred. They were from different societies, different cultures, different ways at looking at the world. 

And when everything fell apart, the lower middle-class Mexican factory worker was much better at handling literally everything than he had been as a wealthy British military school student. But she had spent a decade training with the legendary Sarah Connor. Will’s family had never been all that religious, but he always felt that Sarah was more a Jesus figure, but for some sexist reason everyone always said the Virgin Mary. She had died when he was still a child, but of natural causes, which was a bloody achievement in the remaining elements of society. He had not been that close to the top when it happened, but Ilona had been, and she told him that the commander was devastated. 

“How’s she doing?” Will asked as he approached Ilona and looked through the cloudy glass at Commander Ramos peering intensely down at the solider on the operating table.

“Which one of them?” Dr. Dembak asked, aware of how thick her accent sounded. It always became thicker when she was stressed or at least in a stressful situation. 

Will gave a small laugh as he shrugged, cautious not to move his injured leg or shoulder too much. He remembered tossing the lanky blonde soldier toward the injured commander outside the bunker but not much after that. “Either, I suppose. But I was asking after Dani.”

“She is the commander,” Illona said without looking away from the clouded glass or uncrossing her arms. “Bombs, American racism, grenades, nothing stops her.”

“And her blonde friend there? Private Madison or whatever it is?” Will questioned. 

The doctor shrugged. “We did the augmentation surgery as she asked, but she had not awoken yet.”

***

Commander Dani Ramos stood in Dr. Ilona Dembak’s operating room staring down at resistance solider Grace Madison. Like most children from what had once been from the western states of America, Dani had rescued her and recruited her to the resistance. In some ways she had been like all the other children Dani had rescued, but also in so many ways she was nothing like that.

“Don’t be a fucking pervert,” the late-great Sarah Connor’s voice echoed in her head.

A smile slid across Commander Ramos’ face and she smirked as she thought about it. “You will just never understand,” Dani remembered telling Sarah during a training session in the Nevada dessert years after Grace had died for her in 2020.

“One day you are going to realize that kid we saw in that park in suburban as shit Bellevue is the goddamn hero you have been waiting and are now constantly waiting for,” Sarah told her once in a hotel outside Tacoma, Washington while halfway through a cheap bottle of whiskey.

“Fuck off you ignorant bitch,” Dani grumbled in Spanish, forgetting how well Sarah spoke her native language. 

Sarah chuckled and took a long swing of her whiskey. “Well, Merry fucking Christmas to you too, kid.” 

Dani had forgotten how close to American Thanksgiving it had been when Grace died for her, because truly she had no reason to care, but Sarah seemed to attach some level of importance to it. As Dani added more and more American recruits, Thanksgiving only became more significant. Even if they thought it was the peak of American culture or a touchstone of just how racist their upbringing had been, the recruits always seemed to think a resistance hero dying around Thanksgiving was significant.

But none of that even mattered, it barely seemed relevant in 2041. Commander Dani Ramos stared down at the augmented super solider on the operating table.

All her emotions felt strange for a moment. It was her. The awkward lanky, disproportioned blonde child she had added to her ranks years ago had finally grown into the woman she met in Mexico City in 2020.

“Well…there you are,” Dani said to herself in Spanish as she lightly placed a hand on the side of Grace’s face. Her Grace’s face. After so many years, she had finally grown into her Grace. How the fuck was she going to explain this to her?


	2. The Augmentation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grace awakes from her procedure and awakes a wealth of memories and ignored feelings in Dani.

“Commander,” Dr. Dembak said over the buzzing of the dimmed lights after she stepped into the operating room. It was mostly to get the commander’s attention. She seemed to be entranced with the newest augmentation patient.

Dani quickly pulled her hand away from Grace’s face and sighed at herself in disappointment. She had not meant to get so caught up in her feelings for Grace.

“Yes?” Dani replied, turning to face the doctor and tightly folding her arms against her chest.

“Since you are still recovering, I do not think it is safe for you to be in here... for when she wakes up.” The doctor gave Dani a knowing look for she knew she did not need to explain.

Dani had made a point of being there when every augment first awoke. They were each signing up to give the ultimate sacrifice for the resistance and she wanted them to know she knew that. Each reacted differently. Panicking was common, as was an overwhelming sense to flee the room. Some had been incredibly violent and had to be sedated.

On the surface, Dani had fully recovered but it was still a head injury. Ilona was right and Dani was about to nod in agreement when she heard a sharp intake of breath behind her.

Dani quickly turned around to see Grace’s back arching almost unnaturally high off the operating table.

“Grace,” Dani said in a calming tone but Will rushed into the room at the same time.

“No,” Ilona called in an attempt to stop him.

Dani only turned away from Grace for a second but by the time she looked back at her the solider was launching herself off the operating table. She stood with her back against the wall in defensive bewilderment. She was peering frantically between the three of them.

Dani took a step toward Grace with her hands held out in front of her.

“Commander,” Will cautiously said at her.

Grace peered at him in question and then turned toward Dani with a quizzical look. Her arms and shoulders now with their symmetrical scarring began to relax under the plain uniform she had been dressed in.

Grace blinked at her multiple times and Dani watched, like she had with so many others, as her eyes adjusted to the augmentations. But, unlike any other the first words out of her mouth were an apology.

“I’m sorry,” Grace said quickly and quietly with her blue eyes locked on Dani.

 _I’m not going to let her die for me again,_ Dani has said it so many times she had lost count.

“You better start working on ideas then,” Sarah responded once when they were driving through some western American state.

“The augmentations,” Dani suggested. “What if she never gets them?” She turned to look at the endless brown and red landscape around them. “Then there would be no reason to send her back.”

Sarah shook her head. “That wasn’t the only reason.” 

Dani sighed. “I know that.” 

Sarah glanced from the empty roadway to Dani. “She ever tell you why she got them? The augmentations.” 

Dani nodded. She had asked her during the few hours of alone time they had gotten together at Carl’s cabin. “She said she nearly got killed trying to protect her commander. It was a life-saving procedure, but all the soldiers had to volunteer for it.”

“Her commander?” Sarah scoffed. 

“Me,” Dani corrected. “Protecting me.” 

They were silent for a moment. 

“No requirements, huh?” Sarah stated with another quick glance at Dani. 

“For the procedure?” Dani questioned. She was trying to understand what Sarah was getting at, but it was rather hard to read her expression underneath the large sunglasses. 

“That is something you might be able to change,” Sarah explained. 

Dani did not answer her that day. She did not answer her for years, not until after Judgement Day. They had already found Dr. Ilona Dembak’s research hospital, Dani had recruited thousands of soldiers, and the resistance had already stolen, intercepted, or copied enough Legion tech to make the augmentations possible.

Commander Ramos tried, tried very hard to limit the number of augments at first. It was a risky, dangerous procedure in the beginning. In terms of a numbers game, it never made all that much sense. Legion never put that much time, energy, or resources into a soldier that only had one mission that usually ended in death. Dr. Dembak’s team and the commander, when possible, were meant to approve each augmentation. Dani never liked the arrangement and deep down she knew the other person she would ever refuse it to was Grace. 

“We aren’t machines,” Dani said to a bunker of advisors, ranking officers, and doctors one day when they were all discussing the augmentation program. “We value human life and that’s what makes us different from them. Regardless of what else it does, it saves lives.” 

The rule was changed that day. Anyone who asked for the procedure received it as soon as possible. But the commander also gained a reputation for not liking it because it a band-aid solution. A temporary fix that would eventually result in death.

Dani took a slow breath to stop the tears from rising to her eyes as she looked at the guilty expression on Grace’s face as she stood against the wall. Dani had planned for so long, tried so hard to avoid this fate. But maybe Sarah had been right? Maybe regardless of what she did, she would be sending Grace off to die for her in the past, just as she had before. 

“It is all right,” Dani told her softly. 

Grace keep her eyes on Dani, searching for more reassurance until her eyes began to drift and then glazed over. Dani sprung forward to catch her. 

“She’s crashing,” Dani told Ilona and Will, though she knew they already knew. 

Dani caught Grace under the arm and struggled to keep the oddly heavy weight of her steady. 

“Get a fluids pack,” the doctor instructed the soldier. 

“Got it,” he said he as handed it over to her so quickly, he must had been searching for it before she asked. 

For a moment, Dani felt impressed with how rapidly they had all reacted. And then she remembered just how many times they had done this. It was only the weight of Grace in her arms again that was making her feel like a panicked 21-year-old outside a pharmacy in her hometown. She carefully laid Grace on her back and felt her heart race as she remembered doing the same on the floor of that pharmacy, a hotel bed with Sarah, and on the floor of that dam facility after the Rev-9 nearly torn her apart. 

She became chocked up for a moment and almost let a whimper escape her lips. Ilona must have noticed and lightly placed a hand on Dani’s wrist. 

“Commander, I can take it from here,” the doctor told her. “You should really go lay down.” 

Dani nodded and stood. She stopped halfway to the door and turned back to look at the doctor, who was emptying the contents of the fluid pack into syringe. 

“Could you…can you…”

What was she doing? Why was she asking? She wasn’t that Dani anymore. She was the fucking commander. 

“Put in her the recovery bed next to me,” Dani instructed. 

“Yes, commander,” the doctor added with a nod. 

Dani walked through the darkened hallway of the hospital to the recovery room. She had been put in one by herself because she was the commander. Her asking to have a seemingly random resistance soldier placed in there with her probably looked odd, she realized as she reached her bed and laid down.

She’d think about it later, figure out what she’d do later. She should really be focusing on resting but she could not get her mind of Grace. For so long, it had almost been easy to not think about her. She found her three years after Judgement Day. Grace told her she saved her when they first meet, and Dani always thought that meant it was some heroic act. But really, it was just an average day, an average stand-off with raiders, and an average adding of a new recruit to the resistance. 

The day Dani changed the augmentation rule, Grace must have been 16 or 17. She had made it safely through the survival training school and had been sent off to the military training camps. When Sarah died a few months later, Dani had nobody left to talk to about Grace. She would see her name sometimes on lists of stand-out new graduates, troop movements, injury reports. 

And then eventually in the message from the leader of the northwest American troops telling her who her guide would be once her transport plane reached what had once been Seattle. Had that really only been three months ago? 

Dani must have fallen asleep eventually. She felt someone else in the room with her and turned to see Grace siting on the side of her bed peering at her. To Dani’s surprise, she did not seem mad. 

“Why did you leave?” Grace asked, her face twisted in confusion and the edges of her scars tinged with purple. “Dani, you’ve been acting weird since I woke up. What the hell is going on?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading! I know this has been rather vague on the state of Dani and Grace's relationship. I will be getting to that in the next chapter. Stay tuned.


	3. The PNW Guide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the present, Dani is faced with explaining to Grace why she had been so strongly affected by her augmentation. In the recent past, both of them are forced to confront their sudden and confusing feelings about each other, despite having seen each other for the first time in years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I might be the only person who noticed or cared, but all of the licenses plates in the finale scene are for Washington state. It stood out to me because 1) this series has always been very Southern California and 2) I have rather unhappily lived in Seattle for the past two years but for some reason spotting that detail in a theater in Seattle gave me a small sense of pride. This has all really been an explanation/apologize for this chapter being so focused on Washington state and Grace being from the Seattle area.

_Three months earlier_

“Commander, we are 10 minutes out,” the pilot said through the headset. 

“Thank you,” Dani responded to her as she clicked off her communication device and slid it into her pocket. It did not matter how many times she looked at it. The information was not going to change, and she was not going to be ready for this interaction. 

_What year are you from?_ Sarah had asked Grace in that motel room outside Mexico City the day they all met. _2041_ , she had told her. 

And here Dani was in February 2041 with a message in her pocket from the Pacific Northwest Army leader telling her she’d be meeting Private Grace Madison at the airfield just south of what had once been Seattle. It was going to be her. Only a few months younger and without the augmentation scars. 

Dani peered out the window of the transport helicopter. The serene view of mountains had faded into the stark, dusty endless gray. It astounded Dani sometimes that Legion left all cities looking the same. Mexico City, New York, Sao Paulo, London, Hanoi, Accra. It did not matter one bit how different they would have looked before. After that much firepower they were all just a grey mess of rubble and dust. Seattle wasn’t any different. Everything just looked like it had been rained on a bit more. 

The helicopter lowered and Dani was able to see that at the bottom of the long-ago drained lake, there were hundreds of skeletons. Terminator and human alike. Many were black and Dani had no way of knowing if they were Rev-9 or burned human. She stopped looking out the window and leaned her head back against the headrest as the helicopter touched down at the airfield. 

“Good luck, commander,” the pilot said. 

“Get back to base safely,” Dani told her as she slid open the door, jumped out, and closed it behind herself. She ducked her head as she walked away from it and it began to take off. The only vehicle in sight was a rather beat up looking armored pickup truck a few hundred yards away. Dani smiled, pleased. All her orders had been followed. She preferred traveling with no fuss and little talk about it. The less it was discussed, the less attention that was paid to her, the less likely Legion would get wind of it. 

When Dani was only feet away from the truck, the door opened. For a moment, Dani was expecting some sort of Hollywood movie-like reveal of those badass action stars Diego had always admired so much. But it was nothing like that. Or maybe it was. Dani actually wasn’t looking when Grace stepped out of the truck. She heard the sickening whirling of a H-K behind her and had turned to aim and fire the weapon that had been strapped to her back. But the sky was so cloudy, she could not see it at all. 

“Get in!” Grace shouted as she pulled a rocket launcher from a compartment on the truck and pointed it at the sky. She aimed for a moment and then launched it just as Dani reached the passenger side of the truck. She watched the grey in the sky turn to red, yellow, and black before she jumped into the passenger seat. Grace tossed her weapon into the bed and quickly got inside and began speeding off, tires screeching behind her. 

“I’m Private Grace Madison, PNW army,” she told her as she turned the truck from the asphalt to a rubble covered road that wound around the lake.

Dani fought the urge to tell her she already knew her name.

“Commander Daniela Ramos. Dani,” she told her.

Grace smirked. “Oh, I know.” 

***  
Grace peered at the commander from her bed in the recovery room. Apparently, the bed the commander had requested her to the placed in. Now that made sense for the Dani she had known for the last three months. Leaving her in the operating room with two people she had never meet and not even giving her a chance to acknowledge that she had recovered from her head injury was not. She would also not stop looking at her in a way that made her slightly uncomfortable. Like she had died, or she was suddenly some fragile bird that needed all her protection. Especially since literally the opposite was now true. 

“Dani, you’ve been acting weird since I woke up. What the hell is going on?” Grace asked her. She didn’t mean too but she started running a diagnostic test on her. The results began flashing in the corner of her vision. She tried to blink them away, but she still saw that her head wound was recovering normally, her heart was beating faster than normal, and her perspiration level was elevated.

Dani pulled herself up from the mattress and sat cross-legged on it facing Grace. She leaned forward and clasped her hands together. Grace was taken aback for a moment. She was not sure if she had ever seen her look so anxious or upset about anything. 

“I am sorry,” Grace told her as she leaned toward her. “I know — I know you don’t like augmentation but in the moment, out there,” she pointed in the vague direction of the door of the underground research hospital, “I really thought I was going to die and I didn’t know if you were okay. I hadn’t seen you since everything literally blew up around us. And-and the way I left you out there, I thought you were gone.”

Grace bit the inside of her mouth. She had not intending to rant at her. She peered down at the cracked tiles of the floor and took a few deep breathes.  
Dani slowly got up from her bed and walked over to her. Grace peered up at her but kept her hands firmly clenching the edge of the mattress. Dani placed her hands on the sides of her neck. She lightly traced the purple-ish white scar with her right hand. 

“I understand why you did it, Grace,” Dani told her compassionately. “I am not mad.”

Dani slid her hand to the back of Grace’s neck and pulling her toward her until their lips meet. 

***  
Grace continued to wind the armored truck through grey-dust covered roads. At first Dani had been constantly looking at the aerial tracking screen mounted on the dashboard but after a handful of miles with nothing detected, she relaxed and began peering out the window. Grace must have noticed. 

“I assume you’ve been here before?” she asked not taking her eyes off the road. 

Dani stopped herself from looking at her. She knew it would have been too much. Grace, her Grace, with that haircut and being this age, protecting her, driving her to safety and looking at her surprisingly little. Looking back on it, Dani had realized Grace had barely looked at her while telling her about the future because she could have revealed to much. She wondered what the reason was now. 

“Yes,” she replied. “Most of our aerospace engineers are still here. And I did a lot of the early recruiting up the West Coast.” 

Grace tightened her grip on the steering wheel. 

Dani smirked to herself, _there that seriously look is. ‘Make sure you keep all this goddamn love puppy crap in check when you eventually met her again’_ Sarah’s advice echoed in Dani’s head. _Fuck that,_ she thought. 

“But you already know that,” Dani told her with a smile, which she certainly saw during her quick glance at her. “Since I recruited you from right around here in…2024 I’d guess.” 

Grace’s pale, unscarred skin blushed deeply. Dani felt guilt, for she really did not mean to embarrass her so much. She knew she had a crush on that version of her, but it had been so long ago. But Dani was one to talk about time passing. 

“Not here,” Grace eventually said to break the silence. She pointed behind her shoulder. “It was back a few miles. One of the old Amazon buildings in South Lake Union. My…my mom used to work there.” 

“I am sorry that your parents died,” Dani told her. “That I wasn’t able to do anything to save them and you had to spend so much time alone without anyone looking out for you.” 

For the first time, Grace turned and truly looked at her. The all too familiar quizzically and confused look made Dani’s heart ache with longing in her chest. _What if I just told her everything right now? Where would I even begin?_

***  
“Dani,” Grace said low and seriously as she pulled herself away from her. “You have been acting like I have already died.” 

Dani chocked up slightly and tears began to well in her eyes. She was too close to Grace in so many ways for her not to notice. 

“Wait…” Grace said as she pulled further away so she could stand beside the bed. “Dani, I know that face. You knew-you knew where and how you found me in Seattle. You knew I grew up in Bellevue and how my dad died.” She covered her face with her hands and ran them into her hair as she walked the few steps toward the wall. She turned back toward Dani as she lowered her hands looking as if she might cry. “Oh my god, you knew this would happen. You knew I’d become an augment.” 

“Grace,” Dani said calmingly as she reached for her hand, but she pulled it away. 

“I die,” Grace declared at her. 

There was a tense silence between them that felt like no noise could ever fill again. 

“Whatever mission I get assigned,” Grace stated, mostly just to hear it aloud. “I die on it,” she said as she slumped into a sitting position on the side on the bed. “That is why you’re so upset.” 

Dani made the mistake of looking at her and meeting the intensity in her blue of her eyes. A few tears escaped Dani’s eyes before Grace held out her arm to tell her to join her on the bed. Dani sat beside her and placed her head on Grace’s shoulder as she wiped at her tears.

“What is it, Dani?” Grace pleaded. “Just tell me what it is, and I won’t go. You’re the commander, just say I can’t go.” 

“It’s not that simple,” Dani admitted into her shoulder. 

“Well, what’s the mission?” Grace asked. 

“Me, Grace. Your mission is me.” 

***  
The rest of that day in Seattle had been rather mundane. Commander Ramos visited all of the aerospace facilities to get an idea of the newest aerial weapons and crafts that could one day help the resistance. Grace went with her everywhere as her guide and protector. But since she did not need much protecting, Grace felt more like one part a glorified Uber driver and one part depressing as fuck tour guide. 

She didn’t know why she kept pointing out obliterated landmarks. It was certainly the commander’s fault. Being around her made her nervous but in a very different way than she thought she would when she was assigned this mission. Grace had not seen Dani since she found her in 2024. Well, not in person. She had obviously seen her on posters, in the limited video footage the survival camp received, and at a few events at the military school. It had only been hero worship then. It didn’t feel any different than the mixture of admiration, jealously, and longing she had looking at actresses, singers, and women’s soccer players she had had as a pre-teen before Judgement Day. 

But it wasn’t that now. She was an adult and had a bit of experience behind her. She understood what she was feeling for the commander, but she just assumed every person who felt the way she did about women felt that when meeting the commander. She was attractive, kind, funny, and a goddamn fucking hero. How could anyone not fall in love with her?

With the same amount of excitement and awkwardness, Grace pointed out the ruins of the stadium she had seen the U.S. women’s national soccer team play the Mexican team for her 12th birthday party. Nobody knew what city the commander was from for safety reasons, but it was rather hard to hide the fact that she was Mexican. Grace assumed that was her justification for clumsily telling the commander that fact about her childhood. What the fuck was she doing? 

To her surprise, the commander smiled. “I never paid much attention to soccer, but my dad always had it on.”

Grace smirked. “So, you could have seen me on TV. My grandma DVR’ed it. We made it on the national TV broadcast. Or at least the one in America.” 

Grace seemed so excited and happy with her memory that Dani did not have the heart to tell her that her father had already been killed by then. 

“Maybe,” Dani told her with a shrug as the truck continued down what looked like it had once been a rather busy highway. “But you just would have been another white girl in a…oh what was her name…Alex Morgan! Alex Morgan jersey.” 

Grace exhaled dramatically and playfully glared at her. “Oh, come on! A queer child growing up in this area,” she told her as she motioned to the ruins around her. “It was a fucking Megan Rapinoe jersey.”


	4. A Disaster and a Plan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grace takes the commander on an unauthorized stop during her visit. Three months later, Dani has an idea of how to save Grace.

Grace turned to kiss Dani’s hair but stopped. Where she usually did there was a line of six scary looking metal staples. Panic rose in Grace’s chest for a moment. Through all of this, was that all that was keeping her scalp together?

“So, it’s you?” Grace asked after kissing her on the temple. “I die for you?” 

Dani lifted her head off Grace’s shoulder and wiped the last of her tears away from her face. _Don’t tell her too much or raise too many possibilities. From experience, kid people go crazy thinking too much about time travel,_ Sarah’s voice echoed in Dani’s head.

“Yes,” Dani told her with a nod, ignoring her training and going with her instinct. Besides, Grace had told her they had talked about her never coming back, about her power source being the only way to kill the Rev-9 in 2020. “Or…or you did…” Dani trailed off anxiously as she absentmindedly ran a hand down Grace’s muscular arm. She really should not have told her that. 

“Oh shit,” Grace said in panicked realization. Her body twitched oddly as she pulled away from Dani. 

“Your muscles are still adjusting to the extra weight from the augmentations,” Dani explained, but it was clearly not the answer Grace was interested in. 

“I’m her,” Grace stated in nervous realization, once she managed to get her arms to relax. “I’m the American hero that dies for you just before Thanksgiving.”

***

The commander’s Seattle guide had been left standing against the wall near the door of what was acting as a conference room. The commander was standing amid a collection of aerospace engineers, test pilots, and ranking PNW army officers gazing down at pages and pages of aircraft blue prints. Grace eavesdropped on her asking pointed questions and offering up technical knowledge. 

_Fuck, how could anyone not fall in love with her?_ Grace repeated her earlier thought. She forced herself to pull her eyes away. She had certainly been staring at her for far too long.

After the commander was done giving suggestions on improvements on prototypes and ordering others to go into full production, she dismissed herself and headed for the door. 

Grace just shook her head impressed at the commander as she walked up to her. _What’s the point of hiding anything? You’ll probably never see her again after tomorrow._

“What?” the commander asked her with an eyebrow raise that seemed a bit too familiar.

She shrugged as she followed Dani out into the hallway. “Guess, I didn’t expect you to have so much aviation knowledge. Did you like work for Boeing before all this, commander?” 

“No,” Dani said with a smirk. “I worked at a car factory with my brother.” She peered up at Grace strangely for a moment before quickly looking away. “But I have been at this for a long time.” 

Grace simply nodded as she pulled open the heavy armored door that led into the half-collapsed tunnel where the truck was parked. 

“I also had an excellent teacher,” Dani began with a look of nostalgia on her face as climbed into the passenger seat of the truck. “She made sure I knew everything and anything that might ever be useful.” 

“Sounds exhausting,” Grace commented as she pulled her door shut. 

As she was starting the truck, Grace saw Dani shaking her head out of the corner of her eye. She turned to look at her and locked eyes with the commander, who was gazing at her with that strange look that keep appearing on her face. Grace felt a heat in her chest and a panic in the back of her mind told her to look away. She was the commander, for fuck sake.

“I had a mission. Everything I did was about fulfilling that,” Dani explained. 

***

“So…so you knew?’ Grace asked as she stood up from the bed again and anxiously began pacing around their recovery room. She kept accidently running threat assessments, aerial scans, and human diagnostic checks on the walls of the room. Eventually, she grunted loudly and threw her hands over her eyes to make it all stop. 

“Grace,” Dani said forcefully to make her stop pacing. It worked and she did stop when Dani stepped closer and ran a hand down the center of her back. “Will you please just stop?”

Grace took a deep breath, nodded, and placed her hands around Dani’s shoulders. “I’m sorry. It’s just a lot to process all at once.” 

Dani shook her head as she kept her hands tightly on her back and looked up at her. “It’s my fault. I had been waiting to meet you again for so long and how I handled it was not fair to you.”

“So, I was fated to die…. for you since the moment I meet you?” Grace asked as if she was struggling to remain on her feet over the weight of all of it. Or maybe that was from her augmentations.

“No,” Dani told her. “We have no fate but what we make for ourselves.” Dani had repeated the statement to herself so many times that she said it without thinking about how it would be lost on Grace. 

Grace raised her eyebrows at her. She could tell that the line held significance for Dani and that made her feel even more confused.

***

“Is there a centralized civilian encampment or do you guys have a colony system here?” Dani asked as Grace drove the truck around that dried-out body-filled lake she flew over when she first arrived. 

“Uhh,” Grace replied, initially caught off guard by the question. “Colony system. There are handful in the area, mostly all back by the former city center,” Grace informed her, casually pointing over her shoulder. 

Dani nodded as she looked ahead toward the secured bunker, she had been staying at for the last few days. “Could you take me to one of them?” she turned and asked the local soldier.

Grace slowed the truck and turned to seriously look at the commander. She shrugged. “I’m supposed to take you back to the bunker, but if that’s what you prefer, commander?” Grace asked. 

Dani nodded. “Yes,” she informed her. 

Grace smirked impressed, again. “Alright,” she said as she U-turned the truck on the rubble-covered road. “Whatever you say, commander.”

“Dani,” she remained her again with a playful glare. 

“Right,” Grace replied as she blushed, slightly. “I’ll take you to the biggest colony, Dani.” 

After about 15 minutes of driving, Grace slowed the truck as she weaved it through narrow streets beside a pier half-sunken into the sea. Dani peered intently at Grace as she carefully drove around the shattered bits of concrete and scattered rebar. Sarah would have chastised Dani for being a pervert or letting herself be distracted from her mission, but how was she supposed to not be attracted to that? It was almost her Grace, with the pinkish-yellow sunset illuminating her face in the most beautiful way.

“Wow,” Dani exclaimed as they drove beyond a high stack of rubble and the view behind it emerged. “That’s still rather beautiful.” 

Grace glanced at her for a moment and almost smiled. “The Puget Sound.” Grace shook her head and peered directly down at the steering wheel. “Sorry, you clearly knew that. It’s way too important to the defenses of the Pacific Northwest.” 

Dani reached out and was about to run a hand down Grace’s back until she decided it was too forward and snapped her hand back. “What did this area used to be?” Dani asked Grace to break the silence. 

Grace figured she was pandering to her since she must have been bored by all her ramblings earlier. “A goddamn tourist trap,” she told her with a laugh. “I only came here when out-of-town family was visiting.” She parked the truck and gestured to a half-crumbled stairway that Dani would not have seen otherwise. “Here,” Grace said as she gestured toward it. “We can enter through there.” 

“Alright,” Dani said with a nod as she jumped down from the truck and instantly headed for the stairs.

Grace hurried after her after she grabbed a rather large gun from the bed of the truck and slung it over her back. 

Dani turned just in front of the entrance and crossed her arms at Grace. “Do you think that is really necessary, Private Madison?” 

Grace panicked for a moment, for Dani’s teasing tone was fully lost on her. “Oh…I…I’m sorry, commander. I…” 

Dani gave a small, quick laugh. “Relax, Grace,” she told her with a smile. “I am only joking.” 

Grace visibly relaxed and was about to respond as they crossed the threshold into the colony. 

“Whoa!” a child exclaimed quietly as they peered up in admiration at Dani. She attempted to respond but they took off running through the downward sloping concrete hallway before she could.

As the commander and her guide followed the child, they made their way through a hallway filled with people in what looked like shops that had once lined it, but they had long been taken over by residents going underground. When Grace turned them to the next concrete hallway, it was lined with people on either side, clearly living in what had once been the shop stalls.

Dani stopped in nearly every stall and nearly every person that so much as looked at her. It did not matter if they peered at her with admiration, confusion, or indifference, Grace took in her having warm and caring interactions with every single one of them. 

_Fuck_ , Grace thought to herself. She had thought she loved Maya from her military training school, but damn maybe that had been nothing more than her childhood Ali Krieger crush. What she was feeling toward the commander was so much more than that. 

It took nearly two hours to get to the area that Grace knew the commander would enjoy the most. 

Grace motioned for the commander to standby as they approached the space that looked as if it had once been a corner shop of the underground shopping center. Grace stood beside a nearby wall and motioned for Dani to join her. The commander was confused but obeyed.

“Permission to approach, Master Skywalker?” Grace shouted into the corner shop. 

Dani instantly laughed. She was using a more playfully tone than she had ever heard this version or her version of Grace use. Grace shrugged at her casually. 

“State your name and purpose!” A rather young voice shouted back. 

“Don’t laugh,” Grace grumbled down to Dani before returning her gaze to the corner shop doors. “Captain Marvel and the commander would like to meet you.” 

“Nah ay,” one young voice yelled as handful of kids poked their hands around the door. 

Dani grinned at Grace and then decided to play along and dramatically stepped into their view. 

“She ain’t lying!” Another yelled excited. “It is the commander!”

A few of the children began running at Dani excitedly. But before the first one reached her, a muffled bang rang in the air, screams echoed down the hallway, and the ceiling shook as bits of concrete rained down around them. 

Dani and Grace instantly meet eyes and shared the sinking feeling that everything was about to go horribly wrong. For a brief moment, Dani felt comfort in the fact that she knew Grace did not die here. But this wasn’t some movie, in which she already knew Grace would be appearing in the sequel. It was real life and she could have altered the timeline somehow.

“Kids,” Grace said in a commanding voice as she swung her gun off her back and into her arms. “Back into the shop.”

“What was that?!” one of the girls nervously questioned. 

“Back into the shop!” Grace barked at them. 

Dani looked back to see the girl jump and look as if she might cry. 

“Come with me, _chica_ ,” Dani told the frightened girl as she took her hand and led her and the others into the shop. 

“The window above the Darkhorse section,” Grace called professionally back to Dani without looking at her. 

Once Dani entered the shop, she realized it was filled with children from the underground community, probably 30 or 40. The floor was covered in pages and pages of degraded glossy material and stakes of tattered comics were piled everywhere. Dani spotted a piling sign that read “Darkhorse” and a small window above it. 

“This way,” she told the children as she went to the window and forced it open. It opened to what looked like it had once been a ventilation shaft or a fire escape. Thankfully a ladder was still fastened to the wall and reached up to the surface. 

The commander turned to the horde of children. 

“Do you know where your evacuation location is?” Dani asked them calmly. 

A few of the children peered around in panic. Eventually an older boy, that Dani was rather sure was Master Skywalker stepped forward. 

“It’s the ferry station,” he told her straining to remain confident. “I know the way.” 

Dani nodded at him seriously and placed a hand firmly on his shoulder. “Good. You led the way. Don’t be scared.” 

He nodded and climbed up and out of the window. Dani helped each of the children climb up the decaying shelving unit and up to the window. 

“What about our parents?” one scared looking boy with large brown eyes asked. 

“They are all back there,” a slightly older child told her while pointing back into the shopping center.

Dani nodded at them. _Promises are good, kid. But make too many that you don’t keep, and everyone will turn against you,_ Sarah’s jaded wisdom echoed. “Grace…Captain Marvel and I will help them. Go to the ferry and we’ll follow you.” 

A few of the children gave her teary nods before they began scrambling up the ladder. 

When the last one was out, Dani pulled the window shut. She pulled her handgun out of its holster and went to join Grace in the hallway. She was more or less in the same position, intensely staring down the hallway with her gun at the ready. 

“The children are heading for their evac location,” Dani told her as she stood at the ready beside her. 

“Boat’s anchored off Whidbey. It’s heading over,” Grace told her seriously. 

Dani nodded without looking at Grace. “What about the rest of them?” 

Grace head the deep concern in her voice and peered at her for a quick moment. “The distress call went out. They’ll be heading for the docks.” 

“Ground and aerial attack?” Dani asked, more for just a confirmation that Grace thought the same. 

“It seems like a lot of firepower,” Grace answered. “But yeah.” 

“That is probably my fault,” Dani admitted as she heard footsteps approaching them.

***

The commander and the Resistance’s newest augment were seated on their respective recovery beds across from each other. 

“So, like,” Grace began awkwardly, “did anyone else know about me?” 

Dani nodded. “One person. But she’s gone now.” 

“Wait,” Grace questioned, shaking her head under the blueish, buzzing hospital lights. “So, why did you—do you send me back?” 

“To protect me,” Dani told her with a shrug. 

Grace smirked. “You are always going on about how you don’t need any protection.” 

Dani laughed and smiled at her. “Not this me,” she looked up and met eyes with Grace. “The old me. The me from before.” 

Grace shot Dani an intrigued look. “Hmm, so there’s a version of you that needs my protection?” 

Dani could not stand it anymore. Grace getting excited about what had made Dani excited for years. She hopped down from her bed, stood in front of Grace, and kissed her. 

“Huh,” Grace replied when Dani pulled away. “So, you liked me protecting you? I’m glad I was the only one then.” 

Dani leaned in to kiss her again but abruptly stopped and stepped back from her. 

“That’s it!” she called excited and peered at Grace with an elated smile on her face. “I have an idea of how I could save you.” 

Grace raised her eyebrows in confusion. 

“I’m going to send you back earlier to protect someone who doesn’t need your protection. So, when the terminator that Legion will send arrives, they two of you can defeat it together. And then you can find me and maybe the Rev-9 won’t be sent, but even if it is the two of you will already be there.” Dani’s excitement was causing her to speak so quickly Grace barely caught what she was saying.

“So, who’s my mission then?” Grace asked still rather confused. 

“Sarah Connor,” Dani told her triumphantly.


	5. Future Protection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Commander Ramos and Private Madison struggle to protect themselves in the recent past as Dani in the recent future attempts to convince everyone of her of plan to protect her mentor instead of herself in the distant past.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I am sorry that I have been upping the chapter count with every post for a while now. I intended this story to be a bit more contained but I realized I need a few more chapters to get through all of this. I promised it will not be an endless amount of chapters and I hope I finish this soon. Thanks for reading!

Grace wasn’t sure if she was reassured or defensive that everyone else seemed to find the commander’s plan as far-fetched as she did. 

“Who the hell is Sarah Connor?” Grace had asked her about an hour earlier in their recovery room. 

“My teacher,” Dani told her as she headed toward to the door. 

“Dani,” Grace called after her as she hurried off her bed and into the hallway after her. 

“Commander?” Dr. Dembak called as she spotted her heading toward the deeper corridors of the underground hospital. 

“I am fine, Ilona,” Dani told her. She did not bother turning to face her and continued down the hallway. “But, continue pursuing me. I would like you at this meeting,” she then stopped and turn to face her, “as the chief doctor overseeing the augmentation program,” Dani informed Ilona but gave a quick glance to Grace. 

As the commander hurried on, Grace paused and turned to the doctor. 

“Your guess is as good as mine, private,” she replied with a thick accent as she followed the commander down the hallway. 

They eventually reached an underground meeting room. Dani peered over the shoulder of a technician at an old-tech computer console and instructed her to call up a list of people. Grace only recognized a few of the names as prominent people within Commander Ramos’ human resistance. She assumed the rest were just people she had never heard of. 

Grace stood back against the wall as the commander fiddled with a desktop computer and a projector screen until all the people she wanted in the meeting had their image projected on the wall in front of the long, worn-looking conference table. 

Dr. Dembak had been permitted as a head of the medical side of the augmentation program. After the disastrous evacuation of Seattle a few months back and the attack on the commander in the Pacific, Sgt. Harrell was the last remaining ranking officer from all the western American coast armies. So, technically Grace was his soldier now and he was also permitted. 

“Who even is this person?” A man Grace pegged as a younger officer from the American midwest and northeast asked. 

An older officer in charge of the American southwest and northern Mexico scoffed at him. “She does not need your approval, _chico_ ,” she scoffed. “Sarah Connor has done more for this resistance than you will ever know. I support the commander’s plan. Protect her in the past, utilizes Connor’s skills. I approve.” 

“As do I,” said the Canadian, European, and Pacific leaders nearly in unison as Sgt. Harrell as the west coast leader nodded, as did the African leader. 

“But why this Private Madison?” the African leader questioned. “Is she not a new augment? Why not a more experienced one?” 

Dr. Dembak stepped forward before anyone else could answer. “She will be ready. Her augmentations are new but must go through only limited training before being sent on their missions.” 

“It a Rev-9, ain’t it?” the European leader, clearly from the UK, Grace deduced, stated.

“Yes,” Dani answered in a way that made Grace smile, for she was obviously annoyed and felt that the information did not matter. 

“I understand your faith, Commander,” the Canadian leader replied. “But, do you not think it is a risky plan?”

Dani huffed annoyed. “I do find it risky, but not for any of the arcane reasons you have supplied. Gr—Private Madison will be a well-trained augment and Sarah Connor, in any time, is a suitable enemy for a terminator. I know this plan will work and I am done discussing it.” 

The screens began shutting off as Dani strode toward the doorway. She swayed and her knees seemed to buckle just before she reached the doorway. Grace shot forward to catch her. 

“I think that was too much for you, Commander,” Grace said with a mixture of concern and teasing. “Dani,” she amended, shaking her head.

“Oh, now you are nervous about protecting me?” Dani slurred as she collapsed forward into Grace’s chest. Grace steadied her but she was clearly unconscious. Grace peered around for a moment and when she realized nobody was looking at them, she scooped Dani into her arms and carried her back to their recovery room. 

***

Grace shuttered slightly as another bit of concrete hit her on the shoulder as if fell from the ceiling to the ground of the underground shopping center that had until only moments ago been the peaceful largest colony in the former Seattle area. She yanked at the top of her body armor and then repositioned her gun down the hallway. 

The main lights had gone off at some point and only a few emergency lights were shining. With the constant bombardments from above the air was filled with concrete dust from the crumbling ceiling. 

Grace saw the outline of a person slowly emerging out of the dust. She quickly glanced at Dani beside her for reassurance. 

“Wait for confirmation,” the commander instructed quietly. 

Grace nodded in agreement but within a few seconds the red lights behind the terminator’s eyes were visible in the darkness. Grace instantly fired two giant rounds at it. One in the chest and one in the head. It stumbled backward and seemed to stall for a moment. 

“Cover me,” Dani called as she rushed at it with her gun in one hand and her night stick in the other. 

“Commander!” 

Dani swung the night stick as hard as she could at the things knees while shooting it in the neck. _One of the fucker’s few weak spots,_ Sarah had taught her. Dani moved behind it as it twisted awkwardly from the blows. She kicked it hard in the lower back – _another weak spot_ – and then shot it in the other knee and the back of the neck. Dani placed a boot on its back at it fall face first onto the ground and unloaded the rest of her bullets into the back of its head.

“Step back!” Grace called as she was suddenly beside her. 

As Dani backed away as a shell from Grace’s gun exploded between its shoulder blades. Dani crouched beside it shoving a high voltage taser into the side of its neck and jabbed her knife just to the left of bullet hole she had left in the center of the thing’s head. Grace watched her cut a jagged circle and peel the skin back with her knife and scrape away the oddly pinkish and sticky-looking blood. She placed the edge of the knife under the metal covering, which popped back to reveal a small portal. 

“What is that?” Grace questioned as Dani pulled out what looked like nothing more than the flashdrives her parents used to have all around their home office. 

“It’s CPU,” Dani told her seriously but with an odd amount of warmth. She tossed it onto the ground beside the thing’s body and simply stared at it for a moment. 

“What are you doing?” 

Dani raised a hand up to silence her. After about ten more seconds, Dani sighed and shook her head. She held the CPU in her hand and turned to Grace. 

“It did not self-destruct,” she told the solider. “That means this cannot be another more than a Rev-5.” 

Grace peered at her in surprise and turned to look at the thing’s broken body. “Rev-5? I haven’t seen one of those in years.” 

Dani nodded, seeming disappointed. “There are barely any left. So, this one,” she said as she kicked it, “must have been here a long time waiting for me.” She let out a string of what Grace could only assume were Spanish cuss words. 

Grace scoffed at her, shaking her head impressed. “But you disposed of it in like less than a minute,” she pointed out. “That was fucking awesome.” Grace also thought it was hot as hell, but she decided not to say that. 

Dani peered at her for a moment and then a smug smile slide across her face as she took in Grace’s awestruck expression. “We should head to the evac location.” 

Grace nodded. But before either of them could move a deafening bang erupted and the concrete ceiling caved in around them. 

***

Grace carefully laid Dani into her recovery bed. She felt an intense desire to keep her arms underneath her sleeping form and lay down beside her, but it felt like a violation. It would not have been the first time they had done such a thing, certainly not after their escape from Seattle, which everyone else in the resistance had deemed heroic. They both thought it was too messy, disorganized, and emotional for that descriptor. 

Grace reluctantly pulled her arms back and crossed them against her chest as she peered down at the commander. Dani, she remained herself. It still felt strange that she had the permission to address her so causally. She had gone to school with a Dani, was on a select soccer team with another Dani. Her greatest hero, the woman she had admired so strongly from the first time she saw her, everyone’s hope for the future of humanity. Dani did not seem grand enough. 

_Nothing would be grand enough for what she has done,_ Grace realized. 

Grace reached her hand out and softly ran it down the commander’s face before resting the hand on her shoulder

“Fuck,” she whispered under her breath. Grace thought the commander’s plan to send her to the past to protect her friend or mentor or whatever she was a bit risky, just like everyone else did. But she realized while staring down at the commander looking beautiful and helpless in their recovery room that if she thought it was the best way to protect her in the past, Grace was going to do it. She’d give anything to protect her. 

Dani slowly and groggily turned towards her. “ _Hola, chica_.” 

Grace peered down at her and bit the inside of her cheek to cover the fact that she was crying. She had rarely done that in front of people since Judgement Day.

“Whatever this mission is, Dani,” Grace told her tearfully, “I want to start training now. All I want to do it protect you.”

Dani reached her arm up. Grace leaned down so Dani could place her hand on the side of her face. “Gracias, but that is not all I want from you, Grace.” 

“What else then?” Grace asked, slightly picking up on Dani’s suggestive tone. 

Dani smirked up at her. “You really don’t have any idea?” 

Grace chuckled as she climbed onto the bed. 

***

Dani awoke with a violent inhale of dust and instantly began choking. She forced the concrete slab off her chest, sat up, and coughed down toward the slab on her legs. Once she was able to breath, she lifted the slab off her legs and shoved it aside. She closed her eyes for a moment and attempted to calm herself. _Panic in the moment, kid and that panic will plague you forever. Speaking from experience,_ Sarah had said as she raised a bottle of whiskey to her lips. 

“I’m not panicking,” Dani whispered to either herself, the darkness, or Sarah. She wasn’t certain. She felt her for weapons beside her. The night stick was smashed under a chunk of concrete, but her gun remain intake. She grabbed it and placed it back in its hustler. 

“Grace?” she called into the concrete-dust clouded darkness. Even the emergency lights had gone out at that point, but the collapse was so great light was coming from above. It was usefully but made Dani even more worried since it had seemed that they were at least two stories underground. A panic rose inside Dani, one she had barely felt since that dam facility in Nevada or maybe it was the same. Maybe it was stronger. She had been far more alone for far longer than she had been on that day in 2020.

Dani heard a pained scream-cry that did not seem that far away but everything around her that was just a concrete mess. 

“Grace?” she called again. Dani carefully scanned the area and saw one chuck of rubble that seemed to be bouncing ever so slightly. “Grace!”

Dani sprinted over, seized one side of the slab, and used all her strength to lift It up and toss it aside. It revealed a dust-covered, blood streaked Grace. She struggled to catch her breath for a moment but when she did Dani instantly leaned down and kissed her, passionately on the lips. 

Grace felt like her chest had cracked open and something deep inside of her had awaken. _Oh fuck, oh fuck!_ Grace thought. Her body was teeming with excitement, more excitement than she ever thought was possible.

But then Dani quickly and abruptly pulled away. Grace unintentionally let out a huffish groan as Dani covered her face with embarrassment. 

“I am sorry, Grace,” Dani explained as she lowered her hand. “I did not mean to do that.” 

Grace slowly pushed herself into a sitting position. “Uhh, umm, no. Commander…Dani, um.” The solider shook her head embarrassed. “Don’t be sorry. I’m not sorry that you did that,” she explained slowly. 

Dani silently helped her to her feet. 

Grace exhaled painfully. “No, commander,” she replied. “I’m fine. I’ll be fine. We need to keep moving. If they have hit this with this much firepower, they aren’t going to stop. We need to get you out of here. You’re too important.” 

“Grace,” Dani called at her seriously. She peered back at her, clenching her ribs with almost the same face she made before she collapsed in that stolen pickup, the pharmacy, and the dam facility. “I am no more important than you are.” 

Grace laughed at her as she slumped against the crumbling concrete wall. Dani rushed over and placed herself underneath her arm. 

“I got you, _chica_ ,” Dani told her as she adjusted her weight comfortably onto her shoulder. “I’m getting us both out of here.” 

The commander navigated the both of them through the collapsed remnants of the colony until they reached the stairway they entered though. Thankfully the area outside the colony was untouched and the pickup truck remained untouched. Dani dragged Grace toward it and grunted as she heaved her into the passenger seat as she groaned, coughed, and spurted up a bit of blood. 

Dani hurried into the driver’s seat and began readjusting the seat as she peered over at Grace. “Where is your secondary evac location?”

Grace violently coughed a few times. “Taholah. It’s on the Quinault Reservation. They were so used to fighting us white motherfuckers for generations that those metal motherfuckers barely stood a chance.” Grace seemed pleased for a moment but was quickly overtaken by pain. “Just get on I-5 and then follow any remaining sign that says west.” 

Grace spurted blood again. 

“Grace!” Dani called but the solider seemed to have passed out in the passenger seat. “Grace!”


	6. Robot Blow Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grace is not all that good at handling her shit so when Sarah's comes in it comes in hard.

Grace had to squeeze her eyes shut for a moment and then shielded them as she walked into the bright sunlight peering into the augment training facility. It looked remarkably like a former sports stadium to Grace, but she could not place which one. 

“Which one are you?” called the women standing in the center with a long white braid. She was extremely muscle despite appearing to be in her 60s. 

“Grace,” she replied as she joined the circle of what she assumed were other augments. “Private Grace Madison.”

"Aly,” she replied. “Which army you from?” 

“Pacific Northwest. Out of Seattle,” she told her. 

“Hhm, I though all of you had died,” Aly commented with a grunting nod. 

Grace shrugged. “For the most part, but someone had to get the commander out.” 

“Hhm,” Aly answered, seeming at least slightly impressed by her answer. 

Grace sighed in relief. But her relief did not last long as Aly sent her through the most rigorous 15 hours of training that she had ever encountered. There was hand-to-hand combat, target practice, a flight simulation exercise, a drug identification and mixing lesson, advanced survival skills, and an endurance test. By the end of it, Grace collapsed on her cot that was certainly in a former locker room. She turned toward the piling brightly painted wall, thought of the commander curling up against her back, and quickly fell asleep. 

***

Grace awoke violently and instantly felt the urge to vomit. She instinctively leaned over and vomited onto the ground. It was not until she had finished and spat down at the mess she had made that she realized it was a tarnished looking concrete floor. She peered around to see that she was laying on the bottom bunk of beds inside some sort of survivalist bunker. The walls were covered with plastic shelves filled with canned goods, army MREs, and containers of water. One entire shelf was just boxes of ammunition as a variety of guns were laid on the sleeves below it. 

Grace looked over to the door and saw that the lock seemed to have been blasted off. Dani was standing at the small table. In front of her she was mixing packets of instant coffee into two metal cups.

“Where the fuck are we?” Grace questioned to get Dani’s attention.

“About halfway to the coast,” the commander told her with a casual shrug. 

Grace sat up and grunted from the pain in her side. It hurt less than she had expected. She peered down to see that it had been masterfully bandaged. She smirked over at Dani impressed. “How the hell did you find this place?”

“Out of place Confederate flags equal survivalist nut bags.”

Grace raised an eyebrow at her since it did not sound like something she would say. Dani shook her head as she handed her one of the mugs.

“There is a car in the garage nearby,” Dani told her as she sat on the metal chair across from her. “I am going to hotwire it once you are ready to keep moving.”

“Hotwire? So, you were a car girl?” Grace asked with an amused tone. 

Dani rolled her eyes at the solider as she lowered her mug. “No, I worked at a car factory. Naturally some knowledge came with the job.” 

“Criminal knowledge?’ Grace teased her amused. 

Grace saw the smile on Dani’s face as she took another drink of her coffee. Grace laughed, which caused a shooting pain through her side.

“Are you alright?” Dani asked the soldier. She leaned forward and was about to place a hand over the injured section of her abdomen but pulled her hand back. She had gotten away with too much for too long, Grace was clearly catching on. 

Dani cautiously looked up at Grace and found her quizzically staring at her. 

“You kissed me back there, didn’t you?” Grace asked leaning forward with her elbows planted firmly on her knees. 

Dani exhaled slowly and nodded. “I…I…I shouldn’t have done that.” 

Grace was silent for a moment, took a long drink of her coffee, and then peered at Dani instantly as she lowered the dinged-up cup from her lips. “You’ve been acting…weird since the moment we met. It’s…um, I hope I’m not speaking out of line commander, but it feels like you know me or are more familiar with me than…you should be, that it makes sense for you to be.” 

Dani remained rigidly sitting in her chair despite the feeling that her inside were able to crumble in upon themselves. “Grace, I…” 

The loud buzzing and vibrating of the commander’s comms device on the metal table filled the bunker. Grace jumped but Dani coolly stood and walked toward it. She stopped if from giving off so much noise, peered at the screen and heavily sighed, despite the good news. 

“It’s the navy,” Dani stated without turning to look at Grace. “They are on their way to Taholah. If we leave now, we should meet them when they arrived at the port. Pack up as much of this food as you can, I’m going to go start the car.” 

***

Sophia, an augment from the former Portland area, kicked Grace so hard in the chin that she went flying backward. While she was peering directly up at the sunny sky, the path of her trajectory filled her eyes and she was able to land her hands on the worn grass and guide herself to the ground. 

_Well, that’s fucking new,_ she grinned to herself as she guided her feet to the ground and launched herself back at Sophia. She almost reached her when she heard a blast from a gun off to her right. She attempted to spin away from it but couldn’t. The extreme forcefully tranquilizer dart shot her out of the air and forced her to roll multiple times on the grass. 

_Fuck. Forgot about Beth._

When Grace came to a stop on her back on the grass, Aly appeared in her blurred vision about her. 

“Not good enough, Madison,” she told her as she leaned closer to her. She forcefully patted her hand against the side of her face multiple times. “Commander pet or no, you have to do better.” 

“Yes, ma’am,” she said as she attempted to get up and make it to the sideline where the antidote was. She wasn’t fast enough and passed out on the grass. 

***

Dani winded the stolen vehicle down the broken streets that connected big city Washington to its rural western coastline. The commander drove over a rather deep pothole, which caused the truck to shake. Grace grunted violently and covered her mouth to stop herself from expelling more painful reactions. 

“ _Lo siento_ ,” Dani said quickly and instinctively. 

Grace scoffed out a laugh as she placed a hand over her painful said. “It’s okay, commander.”

Dani peered at the soldier quizzically. 

Grace laughed. “Even I know that much Spanish and I took French in school.” 

Dani raised an eyebrow at her since it seemed like an odd choice for a girl from the west coast. 

Grace laughed, with a bit of pain coming through as she shook her head. “It was after my parents took me to Vancouver.” 

“For what? A soccer game?” Dani questioned. She was still astounded how much of a part women’s soccer played into this version of Grace’s childhood, since it was never something her Grace had never mentioned.

Grace huffed loudly as she clenched her side. “Yes, it was because the U.S. team was playing the Canadians at BC Place in Vancouver. But it was a good fucking game and I enjoyed the city. So, when we got home, I googled what the other major language in Canada was and French came up.” 

“Not in western Canada, though,” Dani pointed out. She realized that if she was the same age as Grace describing she would have no idea, but as the North American Commander she was keenly aware. 

Grace jokingly motioned to herself. “Well, clearly I know that now, Commander.” 

Dani laughed as she wove the truck down tight, winding streets lined by pine trees on either side. 

“So what language did you take in school?” Grace asked Dani casually. 

Dani smirked at her. “Latin.”

“What? Why?” 

Dani shrugged behind the truck’s wheel. “Catholic school?” she replied with a shrug. 

“How the fuck is your English so good then?” Grace as she leaned toward her. 

Dani glanced at her briefly before turning her eyes to the empty, open road. “Diego,” she stated.

“Who?” Graced questioned. 

Dani took a deep breathe. It was odd to realize Grace, any version of her had never head of Diego. 

“He was my brother,” Dani clarified. “He wanted to be a movie star or a pop star or a television star. He thought us moving to Los Angeles was his best chance,” she explained with a melancholy sense of hopefulness. 

“What were you going to do once you got there?” Grace questioned. 

Dani shrugged. “I had looked into it. USC and UCLA, like most schools in the states at that time, had rather good programs for undocumented students. I promise it was not terribly sexist, but I was going to chose whichever one Diego found a job closest to.”

“So, what happened?” Grace asked with a casually and optimistic tone. 

“My life imploded about a month before I had saved up enough money to give to our uncle to sneak us across the border,” Dani explained jadedly. 

“Shit,” Grace replied sadly. “That’s fucked up, commander.”

“I had even contacted a friend of mine, rather rich friend, who’d gone to college in the states. UCLA for acting, I think. Anyway, she had already done too much for me by the day the first terminator arrived. So, I was on my own until you and another person showed up.” 

“Who?” Grace questioned indigently. 

“Oh, just some psychopathic American,” Dani explained, keeping her emotions indifferent. “There are thousands of those like her throughout the country. As you will soon learn.”


	7. No Apologies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sarah Connor enters with a bang and Dani makes up for the bombshell she did not mean to drop on Grace.

Sarah Connor’s phone dinged beside her on the kitchen table. She looked up from the gun she was cleaning and read the text. She gave a guttural amused laugh. She shook her head as she finished cleaning the gun, loaded it, and shoved it into the hustler under her left arm. 

She got up from her table and walked over to the bed. She yanked out the filled backpack from an army surplus store from underneath it. She carried it over to the closet by the front door and tossed it beside the filled black duffel bag. She walked over to the cabinet underneath the sink and grabbed the two large repurposed laundry detergent bottles. She dumped one throughout the living and kitchen area and the other through the bedroom and bathroom. 

She went to the closet and slung the backpack onto her back and grabbed the duffel bag. She carried them out of the small, secluded desert cabin and tossed them into the backseat of the banged-up SUV, opting for it instead of the even more banged up hatchback. 

She walked around to the back of the cabin and removed three steel lids from three steel drums. She pushed them over one-by-one spilling their oily contents toward the wooden cabin. She grabbed the sunglasses from the collar of her shirt and put them on as she got into the driver seat of the SUV. It was only a short drive until she reached the top of the nearby hill. She had left the car about 0.3 of a mile behind and walked to the spot where rocks were perfectly arranged for a sniper hideout. But Sarah did not have a sniper rifle. 

She positioned her rocket launcher at what had been her home in the Mexican desert off and on for about three years and waited. Her phone dinged again, and she slipped it out of her pocket to read it. 

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me?” 

The air about 15 feet in front and 40 feet about her cabin began crinkling and pulsing with what looked like blue lighting. A sliver humanoid-looking figure appear but by the time it flipped head over foot a few times and reached the ground, it looked like a fully-grown Mexican-looking adult man.

“Huh.” 

Sarah watched the thing slowly walk toward her cabin. She pushed the sunglasses up above her eyes and closed one eye behind the rocket launcher. She scoffed as the thing actually took the time to knock on her front door. 

“Only person to ever do that.” 

It pushed opened the unlocked door and stepped inside. Sarah waited a few second and then launched. With the cabin being covered in gasoline inside and out and the floor being lined with C-4, it violently exploded and went up in flames. 

Sarah jerked her head down to put her sunglasses in place and stared at it pleased. 

Her eyes drifted to the south and she spotted another humanoid figure, but that one was stopped and peering at the blaze in utter shock. 

“Oh, what the fuck?”

***

“Wait, what? Hold on,” Grace blurted holding her hands in front of herself in question. “Did you say you were alone until I showed up?” her voice was filled with confusion. 

Dani sighed heavily as she kept speeding toward the coastline. She had really hoped Grace did not notice that. She had not been meaning to say that. 

“Wait, when was this?” Grace questioned. “I was nobody when you found me. Just another half-starved kid and if your talking about a few days ago…that’s…that’s some intense shit, Commander.”

Dani peered out the driver’s side window for a moment to avoid revealing anything to Grace. “I’m sorry, I did not mean to say that.” 

Grace gave a long slow exhale that turned into a groan. “Whoa…shit,” she said under her breath. She peered out her own window and tried to wrap her around what was happening. She had met the commander, like for real, only five days ago and she had basically admitted she was in love with her or something? There was no way this could be true. She was fucking Commander Daniella Ramos for fuck sake and she was just some low-level solider. If anyone was supposed to have some ridiculously crush it was supposed to be her. 

_And it is you,_ Grace thought to herself. _But maybe it is also her?_ Grace ran through everything that had happened between them over the last few days. Dani seemed a bit nervous and awkward around her the entire time, she seemed to know her too well, care about what she said too much, and she had kissed her back in the collapsed colony. Grace had never been in love before, maybe it could happen this fast. 

Grace looked over at Dani, but she was just seriously keeping her eyes trained on the road in front of them. 

“I have been out of line and acting unprofessionally,” Dani stated seriously. “It was poor judgement on my part, and I should not have forced you to deal with any of it.” 

Grace began nervously laughing. Dani peered over at her confused. 

“Shit, Commander,” Grace told her shaking her head. “I don’t want you to apologize.” 

The truck jolted as if it hit something and a whizzing sound grabbed both of their attentions. 

“One of the tires is blown,” Dani stated. 

“Dani, stop!” Grace shouted. Dani slammed on the brakes and the truck skidded to a stop just in front of a line of soldiers with guns pointed at them. 

“Identification!” yelled the biggest of the soldiers standing in the line in front of what looked like a rusted-out car shell that was blocking the road. Grace scanned the line of soldiers and they all appeared to by Native American expect for the black woman standing on the end, who was dressed differently than the others and seemed to be making eye contact with Dani. 

“Stand down,” she called at the other soldiers. “It’s Commander Ramos,” she told them. 

Dani sighed in relief and gave a small smile to Grace until the memory of their conservation seemed to return and she quickly exited the truck. 

“Darin,” Dani called as she walked up to the naval officer. “It’s good to see you.” 

Darin shrugged. “We’re pretty glad to see that you made it out in one piece. We have a helicopter waiting to take you to the ship.”

***

Sarah got into her truck and drove it back down the road. She was keeping eyes on the second figure, which seemed to be a rather tall white woman. Sarah was confused and intrigued. It was moving much more human than any other terminator she had ever seen. She skidded her SUV around to a stop and opened the door and stood resting her reloaded rocket launcher against the top of it. 

“Oh, fuck!” the thing said as it struggled to come to a stop. It slid slightly in the sand then righted itself, throwing its hands up defensive. 

Sarah had to admit whatever model this was it was far better at displaying human emotion than she had even seen before. It had even grabbed ill-fitting clothing. Its jeans were a bit too short and its blue and white checked flannel shirt was a bit too wide.

“What the fuck are you?” Sarah yelled at it. It was just a bit too far for a human woman to see unless she had perfect eyesight. 

“Wait, what? Grace. My name is Grace. Dani Ramos sent me.” 

Sarah scoffed. “I don’t know no Dani Ramos.” 

“Not yet,” Grace yelled at her. Grace calmed her mind for a moment and attempted to remember everything the commander her told her. “She isn’t anybody yet, just like your son was just a kid in 1997.” 

“The fuck did you just say?” Sarah yelled at her. Her anger almost took over and she pulled her shaking hand away from the trigger at the last second.

“I know who you are, Sarah,” Grace cautiously told her, worried the situation could blow up literally or figurately at any moment. “I know you and John stopped Skynet and saved your future. But that’s not my future and I need your help.”

***

Grace felt out of place from the moment she began heading to the helicopter with the commander. The Quinault soldiers all regarded her with a sense of confusion. Grace figured they were also looking down at her. They had protected their homeland to the point that it was almost the same as it was before Judgement Day. She wasn’t even able to protect the wreckage of hers. She was getting a bit of praise for getting the commander out but even she felt that was unwarranted and with her injury everyone seemed to assume she had just been a burden weighing down the commander. Or maybe Grace was just being dramatic.

It had seemed like they were going to talk and maybe have a real conversation about what was happening between them. But it seemed since the moment Dani had been reconnected with Darin, who Grace learned was the number two of the entire West Coast Navy, she was too busy being pulled into commander duties and Grace was shuffled onto the ship as just another solider. 

Grace had never realized how army she was until she was suddenly thrown into a mess hall of navy soldiers. Thankfully there seemed to be one other displaced army soldier aboard and they motioned Grace over to their table in the mess hall. 

“You look fucking lost,” they laughed as they pointed to the bench across from them. 

Grace shrugged. “Yeah, well,” she was planning to respond with a quip, but pain shot up her side. 

“You all right?” 

Grace nodded. “Yeah,” she grunted out as she placed a hand over the bandage. It was feeling a bit damp, possibly from blood. “You know where the medics are? I think I overestimated the commander’s doctoring skills.” 

“Yeah, yeah, come on.” the army soldier told Grace as they come across the table to help her up and support her as they walked out of the mess hall. “I’m A.D., by the way.” 

“Grace.” 

“So, you are the one that came in with the commander?’ 

Grace nodded. “Yeah, I was her local guide in Seattle or what’s left of it, which is probably nothing now.” 

“Oh shit, you’re from Seattle? I lived in Portland.”

“How’d we end up in different armies?” Grace questioned, just trying to distract herself from her lightheadedness. 

“I was out of town visiting my wife’s family when everything went down.” 

“Oh shit,” Grace replied. “I’m sorry.” 

They shook their head. “It’s cool. Also, try not to pass out on me. I could probably carry you, but let’s not test that.” 

Grace managed to stay on her feet until they reached the medical bay. She was relieved to see a real hospital with real equipment. She kept herself conscious until she reached the hospital bed. 

“You can pass out now,” A.D. told her with a smile and a light pat on the shoulder. “I’ll be back later to take you to your bunk.”

A.D. kept their promise and a few hours later the other displaced army soldier led Grace through the halls of the naval ship and to her bunk. Grace was almost astounded by the quality of the medical treatment. She lifted up her shirt and looked at the wound once she was alone in her bunk. There was barely a scar and she didn’t feel any pain. She had not asked if she had been given any pain medication but maybe she had been. She shrugged it off. It really didn’t seem to matter. 

She placed a folded arm behind her head and peered up at the metal bottom of the bunk above her.

A good way down the hallway of bunks Dani was walking through looking for the bunk Darin had told her Private Grace Madison, of the mostly depleted Pacific Northwest Army, had been assigned. 

She slowly approached the correct one. Her footsteps must have been quiet enough because Grace did not look at her. Dani took a deep breath as she stared at her stretched across the bed with all her muscles extenuated. Save for the augmentation scars, she was her Grace. But Dani had really not been intending to tell her about their previous time together since it was her own past but Grace’s future. 

But what the was point? Why did it even matter? Her Grace had never been explicit of if she was even still alive in the future she came from. Sarah had always floated the idea that Legion had sent the Rev-9 to kill her after she had died in the future. _Kill the resistance in two timelines at once, makes sense._ So, maybe she died in the near future, Grace became an augment, and went back to die for her in the past again. She wanted so much to ensure it didn’t happen, but she knew she had not done nearly enough.

_Fuck it._

Dani leaned against the doorway of Grace’s bunk. “So, you did not want me to apologize?” 

Grace jumped and supported herself on her elbows and looked up at Dani. “Commander.” 

Dani stepped inside the bunk and closed the door behind herself. She stood at the foot Grace’s bed, trying to convince herself that it was actually real, and she was ready to do this. 

“You did not want me to apologize,” Dani stated as she leaned against the post of Grace’s bed. 

“No,” Grace told her as she shook her head. “No,” she repeated. “I don’t want that.” 

“Good,” Dani told her as she moved closer to her. “I don’t want that either.” 

Grace dropped herself off her elbows and onto the bed as Dani climbed on top of her.


	8. Moving Closer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Sarah and Grace continue to butt heads in the past, Dani and Grace attempt to get to safety after spending so much deserved time alone.

Grace grunted rather loudly as she attempted to reach a hand over her mouth, but the commander grabbed her wrist and pulled it back. She held it against the mattress above the soldier’s head as she kept her lips firmly against hers and her other hand between her thighs. All Grace’s nerves about being on a West Coast naval ship as an army solider had melted away the moment the commander entered her bunk. Thank god, the ship’s doctors had been able to mend her wounds so well.

The commander had been teasing her, pulling her hand away for a moment and running it against her inner thighs.

“Fuck,” Grace uttered between heavy breathes. 

Dani looked down at her nearly naked form with a smug smirk. So many things were running through her mind. Half were in English, half were in Spanish. Half she could say to this Grace, half she could only say to her Grace, the one that would not exist until 22 years in the past. 

Grace loudly gasped for breath beneath her and her body arched up against the commander, but quickly fell back down onto the mattress. 

“Take that off,” Grace stated tapping her shirt. “Take everything off.” 

Dani smirked at her again as she peeled off the rest of her clothes and lowered herself back onto Grace. She gave a grunt that sounded equally painful and pleasurable. “You ready for me, _chica_?” Dani said as she slid her hand down Grace’s absurdly muscular stomach before landing between her legs. “ _Oh dois_ ,” she said as she reached it. “I think you are.” 

Grace nodded vigorously as she was seemingly struggling to breathe, pressing her lips together tightly. Grace tangled her hand into Dani’s hair and pulled her down toward her as her body arched against her even more. Eventually her whole body shuddered upward against Dani’s as she silently screamed into her neck. 

After a few moments, Dani began laughing in delight. 

“What’s so funny, commander?” Grace questioned, slowly regaining her senses. 

Dani shook her head with a smirk. “It was easier to disarm you than I imagined.” 

“Well, then,” Grace said, seemingly flexing underneath Dani. “Let me show you want disarmingly looks like,” the soldier stated as she forced the commander on her back and into a passionate kiss. 

***

“So, who the fuck is Dani Ramos?” Sarah questioned again. 

She had been reluctant and standoffish, all of which Dani had warned Grace about. But she seemingly trusted the texts to her phone that she could not explain and since it included Grace’s position and a message about her son, she assumed it meant something. Grace did not question her logic since she really had no counter opinion to provide. 

Grace huffed. The angry woman had been speeding down roads for hours but since she did not trust phones or even old school GPS devices, Grace had no idea if she was actually taking her in the direction of Mexico City and Dani or not. 

“She’s the leader,” Grace told the older woman with a shrug. “She leads everything in the future.” 

“Hhm. She?” 

Grace huffed annoyed. “She’s John.” 

Sarah turned at her curtly. It was not like it matter for their safety. Nobody was on the road. “What did you just say?” 

Sarah watched the blonde half-terminator groan at her. “Dani told me to tell you that she’s the John of our future. I don’t know who John is, but she always said you would.” 

Grace saw Sarah’s expression turn from emotionless annoyance to maternally concern and then fade back into its original hardened state. 

“So, what the fuck are you then?” Sarah questioned indignantly. 

“Kyle?” Grace told her in utter confusion. The commander had told her to tell this woman that but never gave her any explanation for what it meant. 

“Oh, for fuck sake!” Sarah yelled basically at the steering wheel. “Your leader, your resistance hero never told you what that would mean? It’s only 2020, kid. I don’t think it’s as acceptable as you think. The leader of the entire resistance cannot be gay and Mexican. That’s just too much.” 

“2020?! Pinoe and Press are about to lead us to another gold in Tokyo!” Grace blurted out the first fact about 2020 that could disprove this woman that came into her mind.

Sarah cocked an eyebrow at her in aggravated confusion.

Grace audibly groaned at Sarah. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” the future solider yelled. “My commander told me over and over again how much she trusted you. I thought it was just out of praise since you were her mentor but now I’m thinking it was because she knew I’d fucking hate your guts, you bigoted, boomer bitch.” 

They were silent for a long stretch of the car ride after that.

“This Dani, your girlfriend or whatever, she saves the future?” Sarah questioned. 

Grace exhaled loudly but attempted to remain calm. She shook her head. “She doesn’t just save the future. She is the future. The resistance would be nothing without Dani.” 

Sarah nodded at the solider that was expelling so much hatred toward her. “Sounds like someone who needs our protection.” 

***

Grace was sitting on the bed in her narrow bunk, watching the commander slowly put her clothes back on. She shook her head and laughed lightly to herself. 

“What?” Dani questioned after she got her shirt on and picked her armored vest off the floor. 

“I just really wasn’t expecting that,” Grace admitted. 

Dani peered at her in panic for a moment. Maybe she had overstepped her bounds and done exactly what Sarah had always predicted she would. “Did I…”

“No, shit. Not like that, commander. You were fucking amazing. I just…” Grace looked at the older woman but lost her nerve to keep going. 

“Didn’t think this would happen so fast?” Dani asked her. 

“Yeah,” Grace looked up at her and smiled. 

Dani was returning her smile when the whole submarine seemed to rock unnaturally to one side. All the lights cut out for a moment before red emergency lights turned on and a siren began to sound. 

“The fuck is that?” 

“Proximity alarm,” Dani explained. “We’ve been hit. I’m heading for the bridge. Follow me,” Dani instructed the half-naked solider as she rushed out of her bunk and through the winding corridors of the submarine. 

“Commander,” the bridge captain blurted when she approached. 

“Update?” The commander questioned as everyone turned to look at her. 

The captain motioned for the commander to follow her to the line of naval soldiers seated behind radar screens. Dani heard someone huff as they rushed into the bridge and cleared their throat, but she did not look back at who she could only almost was Grace. A.D. nodded at Grace and motioned for her to stand beside them against the back wall.

“Hydrobots,” the captain told Dani. “We seem to be in swarm of them.”

Dani jerked her head forward and cursed in Spanish. “A non-lethal attack.” 

“Isn’t that good?” A.D. asked clasping the handle of the gun strapped across their chest. 

The captain sadly shook her head. “It is only to slow us down.”

Dani initially turned to A.D. but eventually turned her attention to Grace. “Legion knows I am here. They just don’t have any lethal force in position yet.” 

The sub jerked to one side again and everyone struggled to remain on their feet. 

“I don’t like this,” A.D. grumbled under their breathe, staring through the window and into the vast, black ocean around them. Grace felt equally terrified and nodded in agreement.

“How many life rafts pods does this ship have?” Dani asked, a hint of concern breaking through her voice as she crossed her arms tightly against her chest. 

“Three,” the captain responded.

Dani nodded. “Good. That will be an advantage. I will leave in one of them. Which base are we closest to?” the commander addressed to the entire bridge. 

“San Francisco, commander,” a solider answered while turning away from his screen.

“Okay,” Dani replied with a nod. “I am taking a lift raft pod and I want you to radio San Francisco and tell them to expect me.” 

The captain peered at Dani for a moment before taking a deep breath and nodded forcefully. “Yes, commander. The smartest thing would be to travel alone.” 

“Yes,” Dani answered quickly, before grasping her arm, smiling at her, and turning to walk out of the bridge. 

She silently grabbed Grace’s hand as she passed her and pulled her out of the bridge. 

“Dani?” Grace questioned as she continued to pull her down the corridor. 

“Shh,” Dani shook her head at her. “Just trust me, _chica_.” 

Grace was incredibly confused but nodded in agreement. She allowed Dani to silently pull her through the ship to the lowest deck, where the life raft pods were located. Grace shrugged at Dani as she motioned her inside. 

_Why the hell not?_ the army soldier thought. 

The commander fired up the cramped craft and eased it away from the submarine. Once it was a good way into the dark ocean and out of sight of the submarine, Dani uttered something to herself in Spanish. She then switched the small craft into autopilot, unholstered her handgun, flipped it around, and began smashed communications and electronic control panels. The craft groaned and tilted forward. 

“What the fuck?!” Grace uttered, terrified as she braced herself for impact. 

“Relax, Grace,” Dani told her with an expression that almost looked like a smirk. She grabbed the controls again, righted the craft, and began propelling it forward.

“What was that?!” Grace questioned. 

Dani peered over at her with a slightly amused smile. “I’m sorry I scared you. We aren’t certain but Legion could have the ability to listen to us through any electric device. And the top command of the navy believes we have a spy, but we haven’t identified them yet.”

Grace shook her head and rolled her shoulders. “So, we aren’t going to San Francisco?”

“No,” Dani told her with a smile.

“Then where?” Grace asked, thinking Los Angles was the next nearest base.

There was a deafening bang and as Grace attempted to yell for Dani everything went blank.


	9. No Predictions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dani and Grace are recused in the future as Sarah helps Grace adjust and get a job in the past.

Sarah Connor sipped her coffee as she leaned back in her chair on the sidewalk patio of the only café near the closest bus stop to the Arius Motors factory in Mexico City.

She peered across the table at Grace, who was seated in a tense stance and peering at the bus stop with military precision.

Sarah kicked her shin underneath the table. She jerked her attention toward her. 

“Drink your damn coffee,” Sarah instructed as she pointed at the untouched cup in front of her. 

Grace glared at her as she seized it. She kept glaring at Sarah but after tasting the coffee she stared at it for a moment and took another curious sip. 

“How old were you when it happened?” Sarah questioned. 

Grace raised as eyebrow at her, barely pulling her attention away from her coffee. 

Sarah huffed. “Judgement Day. When Skynet attacked. Or Legion, I guess in your timeline.” 

“12,” Grace replied. 

“So, you’d been to a restaurant? Maybe even a coffee shop with your friends?” 

“Yeah?” Grace asked confused.

“Fucking act like it,” Sarah chastised her. “I know, it’s been a while, but you’ve got to remember what this time was like. Focus on the Olympics or your lady friend being an automotive worker, whatever you gotta do, but do it quick. You keep acting like a sketchy soldier from the future and you’ll end up behind bars.” 

Grace was taken aback by how serious Sarah sounded at the end of her declaration. “Okay,” she told her, feeling like a scolded child. “I’ll be normal.”

“Good,” Sarah told her, keeping her eyes firmly on her while knocking back her coffee. “Keep your eyes that bus stop as I talk to this waitress.” 

Grace nodded as she raised her mug to her lips. 

Sarah addressed the waitress. Grace could tell from her gestures and expressions that she seemed to be apologizing for the food’s slow arrival and offered to refill Sarah’s coffee. Sarah seemingly thanked her and struck up a new topic as Grace pushed her mug toward her to get it refilled as well. After a few minutes, Sarah graciously thanked the waitress and she walked away looking pleased.

Sarah turned her attention back to Grace. “You speak Spanish?” 

Grace shock her head. “No, I only know French.”

“French?”

“Look if a time traveler had told me where my life was headed, I would have made a different decision in the sixth grade.”

Sarah chuckled. “Yeah, I certainly would not have spent so much time as a goddamn diner waitress.”

Grace shook her head as she scoffed at her. “You were a waitress?” 

“That her?” Sarah said as she jerked her head toward the bus stop. 

Grace anxiously peered back up at the bus stop but instantly felt defeated. She assumed her description of a short woman in her 20s with long dark brown hair was not really going to narrow it down for Sarah. 

“No,” Grace told Sarah without taking her eyes off the bus stop. “Wait, there,” she instinctively pointed. “That’s her, beside the guy in the bright blue shirt.” 

“So, she’s safe,” Sarah sighed in relief.

Grace turned to Sarah and nodded. “We’re four months ahead of the Rev-9.”

Sarah nodded down at her coffee cup. “Sounds like enough time for you to go apply for a job at the plant.” 

“What?” Grace questioned. 

“It’s run by Americas,” Sarah informed her. “And they tend to favor hiring Americans for security.”

“Security?” Grace questioned curiously and then shrugged. “I could do security.” 

***

Dani coughed violently as her entire body slammed against the slightly rocking shore. It felt like something was stabbing her in the chest and in the throat and in her back and her side and her head. _Get it together, figure out what it is,_ she thought to herself. It had felt like she had been swirling around in the ocean for hours, but she knew it could not have been more than a few minutes. She felt a coldness start in her feet, reach up to her knees, and then retreat. Something grabbed her arms and dragged her across the sand.

“Dani? Dani?! Fuck, stay awake! Stay awake,” Dani could hear Grace shouting down at her. But she could not see her, and she could not obey her. 

“Fuck! Fuck!” Grace shouted, kneeling beside the commander as she passed out. She checked her pulse to make sure her heart was still beating and held her hand over her mouth to ensure she was still breathing. But, she certainly had at least a concussion after all that so passing out on some secluded beach was not good. 

“The fuck are we?” Grace asked to herself, peering around the beach while keeping her hands on Dani’s shoulders. 

Grace stretched up to get closer to Dani’s face and instantly called out in pain and collapsed down onto her. Grace reached for her injured side. It felt blood-soaked and wet, but Grace lost sensation as she rolled herself off Dani, not wanting to stop her breathing and landed on the damp sand beside her. Her eyes were turned to the sky and the sun was shining instantly into her eyes, but she struggled to close her eyelids. She thought she saw a resistance craft as her lids slid shut without her control or permission.

***

“Hey, Craig,” Juan called in English as he led Grace into the office of the Aurius Motors supervisor. “This is Harper. The chick who applied for the security guard you wanted to meet.” 

“Right, thanks,” Craig, Grace assumed, did not look up from the computer on his cluttered desk. “Sit down, Harper. Back to work, Valdez.” 

“Valadez, sir,” Juan corrected. 

Craig scoffed. “Whatever, out of my office.” He called with a dismissive hand wave.

 _Ah, fucking great._ Grace thought, trying to remember just how long Dani had worked here. Three years? Four years? 

“Grace Harper?” Craig McQuarrie, factory supervisor of Aurius Motors, asked her. “Sit down,” he told her as he pointed to the chair in front of his desk. “Applying to security?” 

“Yes, sir,” Grace told him, shifting uncomfortably in the “millennial business attire” Sarah had bought for her. The button-down shirt was a bit too tight and the khaki pants were a bit too wide. The Chelsea boots surprisingly fit fine. 

He peered down at the printout of her fake resume and the application Sarah helped her fill out. “It looks like from her you served four years in Afghanistan with Blackwater?”

“Yes, sir,” Grace said, agreeing to the detail Sarah had told her to lie about. She explained it as some work around for Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, which was all stuff Grace only vaguely remembered. From what she had gotten from Sarah it was a private military organization, which was better than saying she served in the actual military since she was technically a 12-year-old girl living in Washington state.

“Then a few years as a guard in a private prison in Arizona?” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“Well, you sound perfect for this,” Craig told her excitedly. “When could you start?” 

Grace awkwardly laughed, hoping she was doing okay with all the casual, non-weirdo training Sarah had been giving her. “Whenever you need, sir.” 

“Right now?” he asked with a wide grin.

Grace shrugged. “Sure.” 

“Great, head out that way and find Vala, Vald—Juan whatever. Tell him to give you a tour and start training as I get your paperwork ready.” 

He said paperwork as if it was in quotes, but Grace just smiled and gave a pleased nod. 

***

Grace slowly awoke and groaned as it felt like all her movements were under the control of some very powerful medicine. 

“Relax, Private Madison,” an Indian accent voice Grace had never heard before told her as she slowly woke up. 

“Where am I?” Grace grumbled as she began to sit up and the doctor assisted her. 

“Resistance Army Transport headed to Los Angeles. We received an encrypted message from your submarine in the Pacific,” the doctor told her. 

“The commander?!” Grace questioned frantically as she swung herself off the bed. The young doctor sprung at her like she might fall but she remained on her feet. 

The doctor scoffed. “You are doing better than I projected in my initial assessment.” 

“What about the commander?” Grace asked down to the doctor. She was incredibly short even by Grace’s standards. 

The doctor crossed her arms against her chest and sighed loudly. “She is not well. We are heading for the best hospital in L.A. for her.”

***

Grace used her key card to enter the shitty motel room Sarah had rented for the two of them a few miles away from Aurius Motors. The only light in the room was the television and Sarah was propped up against the wall behind her bed with its pillows behind her back. She had a half empty bottle of tequila in her hand.

“How’d it go?” she questioned. 

“Got it,” Grace told her with a shrug. “You were right. They like hiring Americans because the dude’s a fucking racist.” 

Sarah scoffed. “Of course.” 

Grace unbuttoned her shirt and sat down on her twin bed beside Sarah’s. She began laughing at the television as she realized what it was. “Investigative Discovery?” she leaned back against the wall behind her bed as well. “My grandma and my great-aunt loved this stuff. I haven’t thought about it in decades.” 

Sarah peered over at her for a moment as she peered at the objectively shitty television with an immense sense of childlike wonder. Sarah scoffed as she tossed the remote through to the darkness onto Grace’s bed. Grace peered down at it and then over at Sarah.

“Take control of it,” Sarah slurred as she pointed at the television. “Find one of those Olympic soccer matches or whatever you want.” 

Grace peered at the remote in pleased contemplation for a moment. “Soccer doesn’t start for two more days. And besides, I’d rather watch this,” Grace told Sarah with a pleased laugh. 

Sarah laughed as she took a swig from her bottle. “Enjoy it while it lasts.”


	10. Unknown Future

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grace is mostly able to handle her unfortunate situation in the future as she feels out of place in 2020, trying to fit in among a past that is beginning to feel a bit too much like her childhood expect for one very sexy exception.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So my intention was always to keep the 2020 parts of this story as close to the actual 2020 as possible. But, I for really no reason other than having lived in Seattle for a few years decided to make Grace a huge Megan Rapinoe/USWNT fan and the current pandemic delayed the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. But, fuck that. I had always envisioned Grace and Diego meeting while watching an Olympics game Grace knew the outcome to because future shit. So, there is no pandemic in this version of 2020 and everything happens like we all wish it did, including women's soccer at the Olympics.

Grace awoke with her head against the back of the transport plane. She could feel it vibrating but was clearly wearing a helmet. How did she get here? She racked her brain her answers. 

_Resistance transport to the best hospital in L.A._ , she reminded herself. These soldiers were taking her and Dani to safety. But why was she in the back of this transport plane? Had she volunteered to fight with them? 

_Fuck, maybe Dani isn’t the only one with a concussion._

Some giant looking man, probably an augment based on the size of his arms and his lack of body armor, was shouting from the entrance of the transport. Grace struggled to focus. He had a British accent but beyond that she could barely register anything he was saying. 

‘…the commander…” the giant British man said, and it helped Grace finally focus. They were about to land outside of the L.A. base, which Legion was attacking and needed to get the commander to safety. 

Grace spotted Dani on a gurney near the entrance with four field medics around her. 

“Oh fuck,” Grace muttered to herself as she saw just how injured she was. She really must have not been thinking clearly back on that beach because she had not realized just how much medical attention Dani needed. 

The craft landed with a deafening thud. 

“Move, move, move!” The British man yelled. 

The four medics carried out the commander first and then the soldiers quickly filled out. Grace attempted to pass the ones in front of her to get closer to Dani. But it was pointless. After only a few seconds, they were all thrown aside by a blast. 

***

Grace stood at one of the numerous employee entrances of the Arius Motors and scanned ID cards. It seemed like a pretty stupid job for a security guard. She had a handful of older cousins who had worked at an amusement park in Santa Clara. The one in security got to carry a night stick and apprehend people who attempted to steal from shops and assaulted people. The one who worked in the admissions department had to scan cards to admit people. 

This whole job was going to be pointless if this turned out to not be Dani’s building. Grace hadn’t fully lied to Sarah. She had just not informed her that she was not certain which building Dani worked in. She thought it would be this one, well Dani told her it would be but there was no guarantee that the timeline had not changed. Grace would probably see her. Everything was probably fine. But first shift officially started at 7 a.m. and it was 6:57 and there was no Dani.

The constant stream of workers from the main entrance continued toward the security checkpoint and among it Grace heard a familiar voice, sounding annoyed and calling at someone in Spanish. Grace kept scanning cards, waiting for the cheery beep, and handing them back to workers. 

_Oh fuck,_ Grace thought to herself as she matched the familiar voice to the actual woman chastising her younger brother. She wasn’t an idiot. She knew Dani would be younger and presumably more attractive than she had been in the future, but this, this was absurd. _Holy fuck,_ Grace thought as she laid eyes on the 21-year-old swinging her work shirt around her shoulders and buttoning it up around her tight-fitting yellow t-shirt. 

_Coulda warned me you’d be this fucking hot, commander._

“Have a good shift,” Grace quickly said what she had taken to saying to every worker as she handed them back their ID card. 

_“Gracias, chica.”_

She walked past her without acknowledging her. 

“Have a good shift,” Grace told Diego. 

_“Gracias.”_

Grace peered over her shoulder as she scanned the next few IDs and watched them walk into factory. 

_Should have planned that better,_ Grace thought to herself. 

*** 

Grace came to with an intense ringing in her ears, which made her realize she had lost her helmet. She stumbled to her feet and began heading toward the base. The British augment grabbed her by the top of her body armor and yelled into her face. 

“You! Get the commander inside!” he screamed it, but Grace barely heard what he said. He tossed her away and when she steadied herself, she saw Dani wrapped up and unconscious on her gurney. 

She shot at the Rev-7 heading toward the commander, but it split in two and half of it tackled her to the ground and stabbed through her. She fired at it until it stopped moving and them shoved it aside. 

Grace rushed over ignoring her pain and bleeding, threw herself defensive on top of Dani and pointed her gun at the numerous oncoming attackers. It all seemed pointless. This was it. They were going to die, and she would not even be able to say goodbye to her. 

She kept shooting, and kept shooting, and kept shooting but it didn’t fucking matter. The Rev-7s just kept coming and coming. 

*** 

Juan Valadez was the shift leader for Grace’s shift. They were all meeting for the daily meeting in the security locker room, where the workers were given their afternoon assignments. 

“Harper, cafeteria,” he called. “I’ll be with you for training.” 

She nodded from her spot standing beside the rest of the security guards, who had gotten their early to claim the benches. 

“Where you from?” Juan asked as he and Grace walked through the nearly empty hallways toward the factory workers’ cafeteria. 

“Seattle,” she stuttered at him, not expecting the question. “Bellevue, specifically, but that’s a suburb most people didn’t know until Amazon decided to take it over. 

He laughed. “Yeah, well I’m from McAllen, Texas, a town nobody knew until the president decided to put a wall on the border. How’d you end up in Mexico City?” 

Grace had rehearsed this conversation in the motel mirror multiple times. “Would you believe if I said my grandma is into tequila and casinos, isn’t really allowed into the U.S. and needed a companion?” 

Juan broke down laughing. “If that is true, I wanna fucking meet this grandma.” 

Grace smirked. “Pick a good tequila bar and I can arrange that.” 

He laughed again and hit her on the shoulder. “I hope you stay, Harper. You seem fun,” he said as he pointed at her and walked toward the further end of the cafeteria. “Get this end,” he told her as he pointed around her. 

Grace nodded. She walked until she had a good view of most of the cafeteria and leaned against the beige painted cinder-block walls of the giant room. Her eyes drifted from the sea of tables up a wall and to the television that was broadcasting the Olympics. 

_Shit,_ she thought to herself as she watched Megan Rapinoe clench her hair as she missed a shot on goal in the 20th minute, clearly say a curse to herself, and then give a thumbs up down the field to Rose Lavelle. 

“Soccer fan?” a Mexican accented man asked as he slid up onto the wall beside Grace. 

Grace flinched away and peered at him cautiously. He held his hands up with a laugh and peered at her. 

_“Hablas espanol?”_ he asked Grace. 

She shook her head. _“No muy bien.”_

He shrugged. “My sister says I work on my English. You like soccer?” he asked pointing at the television. 

Grace nodded, realizing her was the commander’s brother, Diego. “We win this game,” she stated in amazement at seeing it again but realized that was probably the worst thing for her to say. 

Thankfully Diego just laughed. “Oh, America win?! You see future to realize that? America never losses anymore. It’s boring.” 

Grace scoffed at him. “It’s not boring. Christen Press is peaking, Carli Lloyd is 37 and she is dominating European teams. Vlatko Andonovski was the best coach the Reign ever had and now he’s proving himself to the world.” 

Diego laughed again and ran his hand along his chin. “You know I come here for my sister, but I might keep you for myself.” 

Grace could only manage to awkwardly laugh. “Sorry, I got carried away.” 

“No, I like you,” he told her. “But, my sister,” he said as he pointed back toward the table he came from. Grace instantly spotted the commander, who blushed intensely and buried her face in her hands as the young man beside her laughed and elbowed her in the side. 

Grace audibly laughed, but then felt embarrassed, realizing she was responding to the commander of the resistance and not the young woman Diego was trying to introduce her to. 

Diego shrugged. “That in yellow shirt, her. She see in you in the morning and like you.” 

A table of mostly American security guards and higher-level management erupted in cheers as a perfectly placed Rapinoe corner kick landed squarely on Julie Ertz’s forehead and sailed past the goalkeeper. 

“Yes!” Grace called and then instantly tried to cover her excitement and pretend Diego had her whole attention. 

“Americans,” he told her shaking his head. “Regard, Dani. She like you. Tonight….uh….the shift, drinks we have at…uh…local bar. Can…can I write in phone?” 

Grace shrugged and handed him the burner phone Sarah had bought for him. Thankfully he did not comment on it and simply typed it into her contacts helpfully under Dani Ramos. 

“Dani my sister. She see you when you arrive. 9 p.m.?” he pointed at her as he began to walk away. 

“Uh, yeah,” Grace told him. “I’ll, um, see you at 9.” 


	11. Better Together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the future, Dani comes to terms with sending Grace away. In the past, Grace struggles to navigate dates and 20-something culture with a bit of help from Sarah.

Grace must have been knocked out because she awoke begin dragged inside a tunnel. She was set down as medics, she assumed, chatted above her. 

“I need to protect the commander,” she called up at the medic. 

“The commander is safer thanks to you. Don’t worry, soldier you’ll make it,” the medic told her encouragingly. 

“I volunteer. Make me an augment,” Grace told the medic. 

She had never spoken to Dani about it, but it was known throughout the resistance that the commander disliked the augmentation program. But Grace had a feeling. She had heard somewhere once that moving beyond the pain was never a good thing. When she was 9, her grandma almost died and talked about a light at the end of tunnel that she didn’t feel ready to walk to. Grace had started to move beyond the pain and was beginning to see a weird light. She would have died if she didn’t volunteer for the program. She was not that afraid of dying but it seemed like a pointless action if she had a way to preserve herself and continue to protect the commander. 

***

When Sarah arrived back in the Mexico City hotel room, Grace was standing sternly at the foot of her bed with her arms crossed tightly around against her chest. She appeared to be staring intensely down at the small selection of clothing laid out on the bed. Grace did not acknowledge her as she set one of the take-out containers on the soldier’s bed. Sarah glared at her as she went to the fridge to retrieve the half-empty bottle of tequila. 

Sarah had dumped tequila into her soda cup, turned on the television, situated herself on her bed, and flipped open her food container without Grace acknowledging her in anyway. 

“Did Legion send one of those?” Sarah grumbled at Grace as she took the first bite of her food. 

Grace shook herself out of whatever trance she seemed to be in. “What?” she questioned Sarah. 

“The fuck are you doing?” Sarah clarified. “You’ve been assessing tank tops since I got back.”

“Oh, um, nothing,” Grace said shaking her head as she sat on the edge of the bed and reached for her food. 

Sarah scoffed. “Yeah? I didn’t realize you were so bad at lying.”

Grace covered her face with her hand and grunted in frustration. “I’ve never been on a date before.” 

“You haven’t fucked that girl in the future?” Sarah probed as set down her spiked soda. 

Grace huffed at her. “Yes. But we didn’t get drinks beforehand. An HK nearly killed us, then we saved an underground colony of children from a Rev-5, and nearly got killed again on a submarine.” 

“So, drinks then?” Sarah asked without skipping a beat.

Grace shook her head. “Yeah,” she admitted. 

Sarah nodded impressed. “That was fast.” 

Grace shrugged. “She didn’t invite me and it’s not only us. It’s our whole shift, I think, and her brother asked me to come.”

Sarah raised an eyebrow at her. “Her brother?” 

“For her,” Grace added. “I guess, I caught her eye. At the checkpoint this morning.” 

The older woman scoffed again. “If she’s already lusting for you, why are you so worried?” 

Grace did not answer for a moment and focused on her cheap tacos. “I didn’t think it would be difficult or different. It’s still the commander. It’s still Dani, but it’s not. This her…fuck. Looking at her makes me nervous.”

Sarah’s mind filled with the memory of an injured, out of place boy under a highway overpass outside of Los Angles. He was so desperately trying to not let on that he was in love with the girl in a photograph his commander had once given him. And here was another out of place soldier, trying to not let one that she was also already in love with a person she had never met. 

“The black one,” Sarah answered pointing with her soda. 

“It’s basically a sleeveless t-shirt,” Grace shot back. 

Sarah nodded. “People your age here don’t dress up for shit. Pair it with the black pants and the work boots.” 

Grace’s eyes scanned over the suggested and she seemed to agree and nodded. “Thanks,” she grumbled sounding embarrassed. 

Sarah tossed the remote onto Grace’s bed. “Switch it,” she told her nodding toward the television. “Sweden’s about to start. Should be a good game.”

The solider peered at her with a look of excitement and appreciation.

“You’re not special,” Sarah griped without looking at her. “I used to listen to a lot of Public Enemy.” 

***

“When we touch ground,” Aly screamed at her team of half-trained augments. “You’ll haul ass until you find the fucking commander and do whatever it takes to protect her. Got it?” 

“Yes, captain!” The team yelled in unison.

Grace had been a constant state of mild panic since Aly had burst into the former locker room that acted as the augment training dormitories about an hour earlier. She had not yelled with the rest of the team and barely heard anything until Aly approached her and slapped her hard on the shoulder. 

“Madison?” she called down on her. 

Grace grunted as she broke out of her panic. “What?” 

“Get it together. You’re the closest to the commander. I want you out first and don’t fucking stop until you reach her. You hear me?” 

Grace nodded. “Yeah. Yes, captain. I’ll protect the commander.” 

“Good,” Aly replied with a nod. “She’s gonna need you.”

Grace exhaled heavily and nodded. Legion seemed to be throwing everything it had at the main Resistance base in Los Angeles. The city had always been a stronghold for the Resistance and the commander’s presence there because of her stay at the hospital had seemed to only draw more attention to it. 

The transport craft from the augmentation training center landed with a thud and Aly yelled for the team to move out. 

“Madison,” Aly yelled to get Grace’s attention. “Book it!” she called as she pointed at the small opening in the doors to the base. 

Grace nodded and took off as fast as she could. She tired to ignore the bullets spreading out behind her and not pay attention to the screams from Beth, Sophia, and the other augments she had gotten to know as she sprinted into the base. 

She leapt through the blasted opening in the doors and through the corridors, beyond the hospital wings, and further into the semi-underground facility. 

“Madison!” Harrell called as they spotted each other in the hallway. “Fifth door on the left. Ramos is waiting for you!” 

Grace nodded and kept going. She reached the heavy grey door marked “Jump Device: knock before entering.” She didn’t and swiftly shoved it open. 

Dani instantly spun around in the enormous room and pointed a rifle at Grace. She sighed when she realized it was her and lowered it. 

“Oh, Grace,” Dani said relieved as she walked up to her and placed a hand on her arm. 

“That…that’s a time machine,” Grace stated peering at the sleek-looking machinery behind the commander. 

“Yes,” Dani answered with a nod. “It is what we have to do. What you have to do, Grace. You have to go back to 2020, find me, and convince me of all of this. You’ll land near Sarah in the desert.” 

“Fuck, Dani. Why me?” Grace asked her desperately. 

“It has to be you,” Dani told her placing a hand on the side of her face. “I’ll trust you. I know I will,” she told her as she leaned up and kissed her passionately on the lips. 

Grace began to melt into the commander, but the older woman had ripped herself away. “Go find me. Protect that me. Share all those moments with her,” Dani told Grace as she began to tear up. 

The doors sounded like they had been breached. 

“Go, Grace. Go!” She told her as she shoved her toward the device. “There is a better world waiting for you. You can do this. I love you,” Dani told her quickly before she quickly turned and charged toward the oncoming attackers, firing wildly. 

“Dani!” Grace called. “Fuck, fuck,” she called to herself as she watched the commander. She forced herself to look away and turned her attention to the device. She punched in the information Dani had told her and flipped all the controls Aly had taught her. 

She rushed into the center of the platform, got on one knee, and bowed her head. “I love you, Dani.” 

***

“Thanks,” Grace grumbled at the bouncer outside of what she assumed was not a bar that usually received first timers near Dani and Diego’s factory. 

Grace took a deep breath and attempted to remember all the drink options Sarah had told her would be appropriate for someone her age at this time as she shoved her fake identification card back into her pocket.

Before she reached the bar, she spotted Diego and the man that had been sitting by Dani in the cafeteria. Diego locked eyes with her and raised his eyebrows with a smile without the other man noticing. He excitedly pointed toward the cluster of tables near the back of the bar. Before Grace could look, the bartender approached her. 

She asked Grace something in Spanish. 

“Uh, um,” Grace replied. 

The bartender shook her head and laughed. “I should have assumed. Arius Motors?” she asked in English.

“Yeah,” Grace told her with a shrug. “Sorry, could I get a whiskey sour?” 

The bartender nodded with a smile. “Where you from?” she questioned while making the drink. 

“Seattle,” Grace told her while leaning against the bar. 

The bartender groaned jokingly. “You better not be a Reign fan. Most my family is in Portland now, so I’m enjoying this,” she told Grace as she nodded to the television.

Grace peered up at it and realized it was the Australia-Canada knockout stage game. “Sinc’s 190th,” she whispered to herself in amazement. “Better world.” 

“190?” the bartender questioned shaking her head as she set her drink in from of her. “That seems optimistic, but I like your confident.” 

“Thanks,” Grace told her as she managed to pull herself away from the game and walk further into the bar toward the tables Diego had pointed out. 

_Oh fuck,_ Grace thought as she spotted Dani sitting at a table by herself. She was peering down at her phone with a bottle of Mexican lager in front of her.

Grace froze in her tracks for a moment and just peered at her. She was still barely able to handle how attractive this version of the commander was and how she made her feel. Dani casually glanced up from phone and met eyes with Grace. She gave her a shy half smile as she put her phone away. 

_Well, fuck me,_ Grace thought. 

The solider slowly approached the table and awkward sat down. 

“Uh, hi,” she stated at the commander.

Dani nervously laughed. “My brother told you I saw you at the plant and suggested you came talk to me tonight?”

“Uh,” Grace uttered and then laughed. “Yeah, he did.” 

Dani nodded while taking a sip of his beer. “Well, I hope you don’t think this is only because my brother wanted me to meet you.” 

Grace laughed a bit too hard. “No…I…um…did not think that. I figured you’d want to talk to me on your own terms.” 

Dani peered at her quizzically. “You seem…familiar somehow.”

Grace peered up at her and when her brown eyes locked onto hers, she was convinced that she would somehow reveal everything. But whose mind would instantly jump to time travel? 

“Good familiar?” Grace asked. 

Dani smiled and shrugged. “I’d certainly say good familiar. What’s your name?” 

“Grace. My name is Grace,” she told her. 

“Daniella Ramos. Dani.”

Grace nodded at her and Dani peered at her with a smile.

“So, Grace what brings you to Mexico City?”


End file.
